Jerry Izenberg, the Hall of Fame sportswriter who lives in Henderson, will be signing his latest book, ?Once There Were Giants ? The Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing,? at 5 p.m. Friday at Barnes & Noble, 567 N. Stephanie St., in Henderson.
He?s bringing Earnie Shavers with him.
?The Acorn,? which is what Muhammad Ali called him back in the day, and what a day it was, mostly makes his home in Las Vegas ? and mostly looks like he still can throw right hands that could stop an ocean liner. So if I were you, I?d buy the book.
?He fought all the great ones who were brave enough to fight him, and not every one of them was,? Izenberg said of his latest sidekick.
Patterson, Liston, Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Norton, Holmes, Tyson, Holyfield and even gap-toothed Leon Spinks ? it was never better in the heavyweight division, and never for so long. The punches were felt from here to Manila in the Philippines and back again to ringside at Madison Square Garden, where Jerry Izenberg was writing it all down, and Frank Sinatra was taking photographs for Life magazine.
Izenberg was asked if he knew that era of heavyweights would be regarded as epochal and singular, fistic sport?s equivalent of when Willie, Mickey and The Duke roamed center field on the baseball diamond.
?Yeah, sort of,? he said. ?It just took me a little while to realize it.?
Jerry Izenberg is 86, and still writes columns about the Super Bowl and the Kentucky Derby and other seminal sporting events for the Newark (New Jersey) Star-Ledger. He has written 13 books. When asked why he wrote this one, he responded with the straightforwardness of Joe Frazier?s boxing style.
?I lived it.?
